Agenda - 08-24-2009 - E1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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DRAFT 25 Attachment 6 Rural Planning Organization (RPO) and ours is the Triangle Area Rural Planning Organization or TARPO. This is where it gets complicated, even though we are making every effort to bring this to the public as a comprehensive transportation plan for Orange County, the part of Orange County that is in the Metropolitan Planning Organization will be adopted and is actually developed and adopted by the Metropolitan Planning Organization. The part that lies outside of that is the part that Orange County will adopt. I think it is ok for Orange County to adopt the whole plan but we are developing it with the MPO. Jeffrey Schmitt: Which is in and which is out? Karen Lincoln: If you come down 57, is sort of the dividing line and it goes around Hillsborough to the 70 -85 connector and then comes back and encompasses most of Chapel Hill Township. Jeffrey Schmitt: Everything east of 57 and down through Chapel Hill in the jurisdiction of? Karen Lincoln: The Metropolitan Planning Organization. We've had a little committee together to start the process. We have a representation MPO, a representative from RPO, a subcommittee of the Orange Unified Transportation Board (OUTBoard) that has been working on that. The initial timeline is on page 25 and this is what we are anticipating. This whole process should be complete by next June. We have already done some of this. We have already established our goals and objectives as part of the Comprehensive Plan, the transportation element. Currently we are conducting a needs assessment. A lot of this data has been connected with the MPO which has just recently completed their 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) which is different from this as it is financially constrained plan. You have to show in that plan how you are going to pay for improvements that you need and then you have to show that the plan is going to satisfy the air quality requirements because we are in a ozone maintenance area. Jeff Schmitt: To whom does the MPO report? Karen Lincoln: They work in conjunction with the NCDOT (North Carolina Department of Transportation). The MPO was a federal construct. They have to work in coordination with NCDOT to get items approved. For example the implementation plan for the transportation projects is called the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), the State Board of Transportation adopts the TIP each MPO has to adopt a metropolitan transportation program and the first three to four years of the Metropolitan Transportation Program and the State's transportation program have to be the same. Craig Benedict: (shows on map) The MPO goes from the Carrboro Chapel Hill area into the northern part of Chatham County and includes Hillsborough and includes all of Durham County it is called the Durham Chapel Hill Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization DCHC MPO. There is another regional called the Capital Area MPO also known as CAMPO which handles the Wake, Cary and those perimeters just think of those two big MPO organizations and then as Karen said they have to come up with their program of priorities that they submit to DOT to go into that Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). Larry Wright: Is the Eno Development District included in the MPO? Craig Benedict: Yes. The Triangle Area Rural Planning Organization is about four to five years old that covers the other rural areas of Orange County and we are in partnership with sections of Chatham, Lee and down to Moore County. Alamance County happens to be in a different MPO and different RPO. Karen Lincoln: A portion of that is the Burlington Graham MPO comes in from Mebane that is in Orange County. Anything there (Mebane portion of Orange County) has to be approved by them. We have asked them to our Steering Committee meeting. They have said that it looks like what we have done so far is ok with them. They will have to adopt anything we propose that is within their boundary. When we go the public there will be one map and whatever is being proposed, the routes being continuous which is why they have to be coordinated. Mary Bobbitt- Cooke: They don't answer to anyone such as the Board of County Commissioners? Karen Lincoln: They are made up of the elected officials of all those places so they answer to themselves. Mary Bobbin- Cooke: Our Board of County Commissioners are on the MPO? Karen Lincoln: Commissioner Gordon is our representative and she is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee JAC) which is the decision making body of the MPO. Larry Wright: You said there would be one map and then you said there were four maps?